Is There Light At The End Of The Arm-Toning Tunnel?

The long answer is that over time certain systems in your body begin to change in such a way that getting rid of flabby arms becomes easier and easier.

So here is how arm toning gets easier as you “stick with it”:

1. The amount of testosterone your body produces will go up in the short term and in the long term: Not only does testosterone help you build calorie burning muscle, but it also helps you burn fat. And intense exercise with heavy weights will cause levels of testosterone to rise for up to two days after.

Wait a little longer, about six months, and your baseline level of testosterone will go up.

2. The amount of insulin your body needs to process nutrients will go down: Resistance training will cause an almost instant decrease in the amount of insulin required to process food. Over time, as you lose body fat, the baseline amount of insulin your body needs will go down even further.

And remember that even the smallest increases in insulin can almost completely shut down fat burning.

3. The amount of calories you burn at rest goes up: This happens on two levels. First, your body will consume excess oxygen for up to about a day after an intense workout. And this process requires a lot of calories. Second, the amount of calories you burn all the time-even while sleeping-will go up as you build more lean muscle tissue.

By the way, building more lean muscle tissue will paradoxically make you smaller because it will help you burn more fat which occupies more space than muscle.

4. You will internalize all the small processes: From preparing food to exercising hard, everything will become internalized. In other words, as you do these things over and over again they will become automatic. You will expend less and less mental energy on the overall process. This in turn will decrease the amount of will power required to keep pushing forward.

5. Your overall hormonal profile will improve: No single hormone works alone. Every single hormone depends on another for function and production. Imagine that all the hormones in your body are interconnected to each other via multiple webs and loops. The good news here is that as you get leaner and exercise intensity increases virtually all of your hormones will become further optimized.

This happens because the glands responsible for secreting these hormones are like muscles, they get bigger over time.

6. You feel less pain: The first two weeks of any new exercise routine can be brutally painful. The good news is that as time goes by your body will start to recovery a lot faster. Even better, your nervous system will become desensitized to pain. So a workout that used to be very painful for you, will become extremely manageable.

No matter what happens you can never stop pushing forward. If you are just starting out rest assured that your body will change in such a way so as to make things much easier. Just make sure you stick with it!